Listening: Post, Bjork
Desiring: soup

So. I feel like I ought to write about stuff but I don't know what. So bear that in mind if you find yourself bored. If you have any suggestions mi comment box es su comment box. unless you're a jerk.

I'm a little lower on funds than I'd like going into the holidays, but I actually got a bit of stuff a while back so that should help. I have a tendancy to go extravagant when I can, but I need to smack that down this year. As per usual I have no idea what to get the boy beyond what he's requested. And he actually requested something of me that may be a little tough to find and a touch pricey. And again I'm wondering who really should be on the list and whether it'll be ok to shop for couples as a single unit. That always seemed mildly tactless to me but then again...I don't have much dinero.

I offered to make mixed tapes for any friend who makes the request (can also make mixed CDs, but people have to specify the format). You folks can request it here if you want.

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Already starting to get annoyed by Christmas music. Stores have gotten pressured to avoid songs that admit that Christmas even exists.

That means I have to listen to a bunch of shit about snow falling and roasting chestnuts and whatnot. Not only is it a lot of sentiments for something I have ZERO connection with, the songs are ass. Gah.

My kingdom for Bad Religion's renditions of "Silent Night" and "O Holy Night" blasted at 120 decibels.

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Had a departmental meeting today. Again amazed at how the corporate machine does its corporate thing. They're always pushing and prodding us to produce more and faster and with better quality so we can maximise revenue and yet they operate with the ponderous thoughtfulness of an elephant in the midst of a rat swarm.

They wanted a restructuring of some of our intellectual product and they surprised the guy who was appointed to do it and hauled him to the front of the room to tell us about it. He blushed and told us it was no big thing, used three sentences to tell us what he was doing and shrugged off the complexities. He was then interrupted by the Sr VP over our department who told us, in a bunch of corporate speech, how vital the work was and terribly complex and what an important job it was... I think the guy just meant that while it was an important task, it wasn't one that had him banging his head against the wall.

Which is typical. It's amazing how the bigwigs can make relatively simple things into overwrought complex issues that need to be scaled and tasked and interfaced...and us plebes just notice that what the job amounts to is flipping a switch.

Of course then they implement "small" changes to our work processes that will add extra considerations to each task and tell us not to worry about the impact to our quality and productivity metrics. We freak out and tell them in a bunch of different ways how this is going to change Everything We Do, and all in Bad Ways. But of course they just grin and tell us it'll be ok. *hopeless sigh*

A while back an advisory team was put together to bring suggestions and comments from the floor directly to management. I was in the charter group but dropped it when I realized the director of the team was a raging asshole who thought of me as little more than whiny child - and a worthless worker at that. But I was on the team long enough to witness them actually state that before we could address anything the department needed we needed a mission statement.

A mission statement.

A mission statement for a fucking advisory committee. Mission statements on the whole are thoroughly worthless. They do exactly jack shit for getting people to take you seriously, but we couldn't move on until we had one!! I didn't create one and was the odd woman out for that. Fortunately it took us five minutes to decide between the ones presented and come to a final decision. The director was amazed at how fast it went. He told us about a 16-hour meeting he once was in at another company to come up with a mission statement. For god's sake people WHEN has a mission statement actually made your job better!?!? WHEN have you landed a deal because your mission statement was better than the other guy's??? IN WHAT UNIVERSE does having a mission statement matter!!!?!?!!

But I kept that to myself and was thankful when it was done.

Later in the meeting today one of the ladies on the committee, er, excuse me, Panel - she didn't like the name "Editorial Advisory Committee" and one of the first things she did was have us change it. To "Editorial Advisory Panel." So one of the ladies stepped up today to tell us about the projects they're working on. One of them is to improve morale. They said their taking suggestions eventhough there is a team in existence, separate frmo the panel that makes its goal to improve morale. By this point in the meeting I was feeling too numb to remark that we have a team for morale so why do we need another when neither believes it is worth their time to investigate why our morale is low. *shakes head*
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In another life I had a very nice weekend, even if it wasn't especially relaxing. On Saturday I got up early to go work out then headed in to work for some overtime. After that I ran to my apartment for a shower and change of clothes, went over to pick up Marienne and headed to HRD headquarters for the Black Sash Ceremony. I got it on my mom's camcorder but my camera was acting up and only got two good pictures.

Afterwards we went to Mimi's for an early dinner and had fun chatting with Kenny and Jenn's friends and (Kenny's) parents. Then we headed to the party and had a good time there. It was a little different from other parties I've ever been to. There were children there and grandparents. Everyone kicked off their shoes and many of us drank deeply and heavily. It was unfortunate that Kenny and Ken learned what alcohol poisoning is like, but hey, everyone has to at some point, right?

Not too much damage to the apartment and it was rather a lot of fun, so I hope Kenny and Jenn aren't adverse to the thought of another bash at some point... *Hint*hint* };>

We crashed there overnight and were treated to some scrambled eggs and toast the next morning. We eventually got out of their hair and eventually stumbled home for a shower. The only way I had to transfer the recording of the ceremony was to plug the camcorder into a VCR and play the Hi8 tape and record it onto a VHS tape. The best way to do that was to head to my mom's house so we did that and got the tapes and gave her back her camcorder.

While there she fed us dinner and my dad regaled us with tales of the sea. His stories involve getting pitched off a tiny sail boat and nearly drowning and horror stories from when he was in the Navy. It's scary and yet I still wish he would write it down sometime. But he won't. *sigh*

On our way out I was talking to my mom about Thanksgiving details because Molasses wants me to head out to Hemet and spend a day with him and his grandmother. She actually made the crack about us not being married yet as a way of saying I shouldn't put his family's concern's ahead of mine. This was in response to me saying that it would be easier for me to go with my boyfriend to take out his grandmother to Marie Callendar's on Thursday and come to mom's house on Friday for a home cooked meal. It was just a suggestion since restaurants will only offer Thanksgiving meals on Thursday, and mom can cook her turkey any time.

Thinking about it, I really hate that comment. It puts my boyfriend on the spot and thoroughly disrespects my desire to please as many people as possible with a minimum of fuss. Not to mention I've fucking told her I'm not interested in getting married.

Gah. It makes it sound like we are remiss in not having considered marriage as a solution to this Thanksgiving problem. Yeah right. As if, once married, my mom wouldn't demand to see us ahead of his family. It's shit like that that makes me think "Marriage? Over my dead fucking body."

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So anyway. I don't know about NaNoWriMo. It isn't working out. It's not so much that I can't get 50K words down, it's that I wonder what would even be worth writing. I never figured I ought to try to spend my time writing. Not that it doesn't appeal to me, I love stories. Clearly part of my problem is in not having written out a good outline. That's something I still feel like I could do, even as the impetus to then write a story wears off. Maybe something to come back to on slow Monday nights when I'm waiting for time to pass.

We'll see.